Affective Reflection on the Dalian People’s Stadium as an Everyday Place

This research approached the affect and emotion of the ordinary Dalian people in relation to the dynamics in the rapid demolition, dispossession and blind reconstruction within the urban change around Dalian People’s Stadium. The silent transformation of the Dalian Stadium crystallized issues with profound implications for Dalian as a city in the north-east region with economic hopes in the 1990s, and later as a city suffering a type of loss. It investigated how the affect of Dalianese in football became spatially evoked, performed and stored as well as how its memory has been spatially stored. It focused on two main aspects of affective change around the stadium: 1) how ordinary life was lived during these affective and emotional changes; and 2) how such affective memories are constructed in the urban dispossession of the city and the region. This research revealed bodily sensations, emotional discourse and emotional interactions are vital components for a city to be inhabitable and for a strong city identity and the production of city cohesion. It allows us to reflect on the complex and mutually constitutive relationships of affect, emotion and the city of Dalian as a place.